From Varbrul to R: a reanalysis of pretonic mid vowels in Fortaleza-CE

Abstract

We propose to reanalyze the data from the thesis "Pretonic Mid Vowels in the Popular Speech of Fortaleza: A Variationist Approach" (Araújo, 2007), which investigated the realization of pretonic vowels from the perspective of Variationist Sociolinguistics. The original study used VARBRUL to model the effect of linguistic and social variables on the processes of raising, lowering, and maintaining vowels. Our proposal is to use mixed-effects logistic regression models in R, incorporating methodological advances in statistical analysis, such as the inclusion of random effects for informants. We intend to verify the robustness of the original results against more recent techniques, as well as discuss the implications of mixed modeling for the interpretation of variable phenomena. The reanalysis seeks to contribute to the promotion of reproducibility practices in Linguistics, offering an example of replication with real data and transparent availability of the code and results.